It’s interesting, but not shocking. Los Angeles may have been letting Del Negro go regardless of what Paul thought of him. In fact, there were surely other reasons. However, Paul is set to be a free agent this summer and the fact that the Clippers are listening to advice from him considering they aren’t even sure he will be a member of the team next season says a lot.

Paul could say what he want, tell Los Angeles what he thinks would give them the best chance of keeping him, but then still book it.

Regardless, Los Angeles needs to exactly that — give the team the best chance of retaining the All-Star point guard. One name that Berger touched upon was Golden State Warriors‘ assistant coach Michael Malone:

As Clips search for new coach, Paul is known to be a proponent of Warriors assistant Michael Malone. They were together in New Orleans.

The Clippers have the city of Los Angeles as their selling point and a team that earned the No. 4 seed in the Western Conference this past season is pretty impressive, if they can convince Paul to re-sign of course.